Church Loses Bid to Bar Play It Contends Is Blasphemous

By RONALD SULLIVAN

Published: October 12, 1990

A legal move by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York to stop an Off Off Broadway play that the church considers blasphemous from being performed in a church-owned building was rejected yesterday by a Manhattan justice.

''I am not a censor, and I'm not going to engage in any act of censorship,'' the justice, Irma Vidal Santaella, declared in State Supreme Court.

In a ruling last week, Justice Santaella said the church had the right to evict the RAPP Arts Center from a former parochial school at 220 East Fourth Street on the ground that its lease with the center allowed it to stop any production it found ''detrimental to the reputation of the church.''

This meant that the church most likely would have to go to the housing section of Civil Court to evict the theater group. To stop the play in the meantime, the church filed a motion with Justice Santaella yesterday asking her to prohibit further performances.

But William M. Kunstler, the lawyer for the group, argued that the motion ''blatantly violates the center's First Amendment right of free expression.''

The play, ''The Cardinal Detoxes,'' a 35-minute monologue by Thomas M. Disch, who wrote it, is about an archbishop who is living in a church-run detoxification center after killing a pregnant woman in a drunken driving accident. It tells how he tries to get the church to bribe a judge in his behalf.

Frank C. McLaughlin Jr., a lawyer for the church, argued that the play was blasphemous and made a mockery of the Roman Catholic Mass. As a result, he said the church had been injured.

Mr. McLaughlin called as a witness the Rev. Joseph C. Tizio, administrator of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, which owns the school. Father Tizio said he had not seen the play, but had read it.

''I concluded it did harm to us as a church community,'' Father Tizio asserted, saying, ''There was a part in which it says God is a sham and the Mass is abracadabra.''

Mr. Kunstler asked Father Tizio if he ''had any direct evidence'' that the play had injured the church's reputation.

''No, I have no direct evidence,'' the priest answered.

With that, Mr. Kunstler argued: ''What we have is a case charging violation of a lease, and that belongs in housing court. But the church doesn't want to go there, because what it really wants to do is stop this play.''